“Of course she knows, you nudnik. The girl’s meshugge about me and I feel the same way about her. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say—I’m old enough to be her father. Don’t start with the gray hair and false teeth again, like last night, because this is the real thing. I’m going to marry her, and then I’m going to use all my show-business connections to help make that girl a movie star.”

“What about Brown?”

“Brown? What’s Brown?”

“That’s the university Noreen wants her to go to.”

Reles grimaced. “That’s what Noreen wants for Noreen. Not for Dinah. Dinah wants to be in motion pictures. I already introduced her to Sinatra. George Raft. Nat King Cole. Did Noreen tell you the girl can sing?”

“No.”

“With her talent and my connections, Dinah can be pretty much anything she wants.”

“Does that include being happy?”

Reles winced. “Including being happy, yeah. God damn it, Gunther, you’re a hard fucking bastard. Why is that?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice. More than you, perhaps. And I guess that’s saying something. I’m not going to give you the whole lousy résumé, Max. But by the time the war ended, I’d already seen and done a few things that would have given Jiminy Cricket a heart attack. The conscience I’d started out in with life grew a couple of extra layers, like the skin on my feet. Then I was a houseguest of the Soviets for two years in one of their rest homes for exhausted German POWs. I learned a lot from the Ivans about good hospitality. But only what it isn’t. When I escaped I killed two people. That was a pleasure. Like it never was before. And you can take that to mean whatever you want. After that I ran a hotel of my own until my second wife died in a lunatic asylum. I wasn’t cut out for that. I might as well have tried running a finishing school in Switzerland for young English ladies. Come to think of it, I wish I had. I could have finished quite a few, forever. Good manners, German courtesy, charm, hospitality—I come up short on all of those, Max. I make hard bastards feel good about themselves. They meet me and then go home and read their Bibles and thank God they’re not me. So what makes you think I’m up to this?”

“You really want to know?” He shrugged. “All those years ago. The boat on Lake Tegel? You remember that?”

“How could I forget?”

“I told you then I liked you, Gunther. I told you then that I’d thought of offering you a job, only I had no use for an honest man.”

“I remember. The whole evening is still etched on my eyeballs.”